International Ethical, Scientific and Political Collegium, also called Collegium International, is a high-level group created in 2002.

Origin

The International Ethical, Political and Scientific Collegium is committed, according to its founders "to respond intelligently and forcefully to the decisive challenges facing humankind". An appeal calling for the Collegium's establishment was made public in February 2002 in New York and its membership was officially presented on 2 April 2003 in Brussels before the European Parliament.

Collegium members and associate members, signatories of the Appeal, are scientists, philosophers and present and former Heads of State and Government.

Composition

Co-chaired by Michel Rocard, former Prime Minister of France, and Milan Kucan, who at the time of the Collegium's founding was President of the Republic of Slovenia, the group's members include: former Presidents Fernando Henrique Cardoso of Brazil and Alpha Oumar Konaré of Mali; Ruth Dreifuss, former Federal Counsellor of Switzerland; philosophers Edgar Morin, Jürgen Habermas and Jean-Pierre Dupuy; international law professor Mireille Delmas-Marty; Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights; Nobel Prize winners Joseph Stiglitz and Amartya Sen; as well as former Ambassador of France to the United Nations Stéphane Hessel, who was also present at the creation of the United Nations itself, former ambassador of the USA William vanden Heuvel.